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1 Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964 50Th Anniversary MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM SUMMER 1964 50TH ANNIVERSARY "Where Do We Go From Here?" Quality Education and Voting Rights Constitutional Personhood in Mississippi and in the Nation FREEDOM SCHOOLING 1 EDUCATION FOR CONSTITUTIONAL PERSONHOOD Presented by George Davis, Valerie Eguavoen and Christine Santillana Howard University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic The purpose of education, [ ], is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it – at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.2 “This is the situation: You will be teaching young people who have lived in Mississippi all their lives. That means they have been deprived of decent education, from the first grade through high school. It means that they have been denied free expression and free thought. Most of all – it means that they have been denied the right to question. The purpose of the Freedom Schools is to help them begin to question.”3 1 This document is intended as a provisional draft in preparation for the April 14, 2014 conference at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Because the conference is intended to be a collaborative exchange of ideas among, scholars, activists, practitioners and students, the authors intend to incorporate ideas and comments offered during the conference into a final draft. 2 James Baldwin, A Talk to Teachers, collected in The Price of the Ticket 3 Kathy Emery, Sylvia Braselmann, and Linda Gold. Freedom School Curriculum Mississippi Freedom Summer, (Edited and Introduced) 1 I. INTRODUCTION The narrative of the history of African American education in the United States usually begins and sometimes seems to end with the decision by the United States Supreme Court in Brown v Board of Education, holding that in the matter of public school education state-enforced segregation was a per se violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. To the extent that the narrative looks further back into the past than Brown, it is typically to acknowledge the fact that during slavery, not only did white owners rarely see the need to educate their black slaves but indeed understood that education posed such a grave threat to the institution of slavery that owners made it a crime to teach slaves to read and write. To be sure, the constitutional significance of Brown in ending state-sponsored American racial apartheid cannot be overstated, nor can it be doubted that the history of black education during slavery serves as a crucial lens through which one may seek to understand the institution of slavery. However, there is a part of the history of African-American education that is all too often neglected: It is the history of resilience, organization and implementation by African-Americans in the struggle to exercise a right to education. As public debate grows today on the issue of education as a civil rights, it serves us well to consider the periods of history where deprivation aside, African-Americans planned and executed ways to exercise their right to education. Out of the Freedom Movement of the Civil Rights Era, the Freedoms Schools were born and in the summer of 1964 a change came to Mississippi’s education system. In the tradition of slave rebellions through literacy and African- Americans who risked their lives to teach in the south in the post-civil war era, Freedom Schools retell the narrative of African-American education from the perspective of a will to learn. In 2 many ways, the history and experience of Freedom schools in Mississippi serves as a counterpoint to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown. If Brown’s narrative was that African Americans should be afforded a quality education so that they may be integrated into American society, the Freedom School’s counter narrative was that African-American wanted and needed to learn so as to fundamentally change a society that had never seen, much less treated them, as full constitutional persons. II THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM SCHOOLS: HOW AND WHY DID THEY COME ABOUT? “The Negroes in Mississippi are fed up with life here. We feel that it is time something was done to stop the killings or murders, the prejudice, the mistreatment of Negroes here. Freedom is a very precious thing to any race of people, but in a nation that is supposed to be free and where oppression still exists, something really has to be done.”4 Southern states and specifically the Delta cotton plantations in Mississippi relied on cheap, black labor during the 1960’s. However, when the Freedom Movement grew, the White Citizens Council, in response to the Brown v. Board decision, sought to persuade plantation owners to replace black laborers with machines. 5 Their purpose was to drive the black population out of Mississippi to ensure they did not achieve any political power.6 Voting rights thus became even more critical for blacks, though the Freedom Movement had already been fighting to register black voters against white opposition. By the end of 1963, despite the enormous efforts of the Movement, there was little achievement for black voting rights, violence was frequent and Black voters had no legal or political support.7 4 Editor C.T. The Freedom Carrier, Greenwood Grumbles, Speaking of Freedom. Examples of Student Work (July 16, 1964), www.educationanddemocracy.org. 5 Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Mississippi Freedom Summer Events. History & Timeline, 1964 (Freedom Summer), www.crmvet.org. 6 Id. 7 Id. 3 In an attempt to change the conditions in the Deep South, exhausted and frustrated activists realized they needed to come together with COFO organizers and SNCC activists. Community organizers and volunteers collaborated and after much careful planning, the Freedom Summer emerged, creating the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.8 It became evident that black children were being educated by a system that shamed them and taught them to devalue themselves. There was a strong need for education and because young activists were becoming more involved in the Movement, the idea for an educational program was necessary. A. Why the Schools Were Created/Who Was Responsible The initial plans for Freedom Schools were developed by Charlie Cobb (Cobb), the field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).9 As a student at Howard University, he quickly became involved in the sit-in movement, eventually leading to his work with the SNCC.10 During the Freedom Movement, Cobb expressed that blacks often silenced themselves in order to survive in white America,11 and this tremendously frustrated him because it was not only morally problematic, but he also knew there was great potential in his community and he wanted them to thrive. Cobb stated, “Here, an idea of your own is a subversion that must be squelched . Learning here means learning to stay in your place . to be satisfied – a “good nigger” . What if we showed what was possible in education?”12 Traditional Mississippi schools expressed a message of racial inferiority, which motivated Cobb’s foundation for the Freedom Schools. He wanted black children to be educated, not only in subjects such as 8 Id. 9 Emery, Kathy & Gold, Linda. Introduction: Freedom Summer and the Freedom Schools (2004), at 4. 10 Allen, Gavroche. The Occupied Providence Journal. An Interview With Former Civil Rights Organizer, Charles Cobb, Jr. (September 2, 2012). 11 Supra note 2. 12 Id. 4 English, mathematics, and science, but also internally, and politically – to become future activists and leaders who would create meaningful change. Obtaining the right to vote for black people was certainly an important objective, but Cobb’s dream involved more revolutionary and deep-seeded change.13 Cobb chose the summer of 1964 to open the Schools because there would be volunteers during the summer and he wanted to utilize their skills and have them serve as teachers at the Freedom Schools. Their knowledge would be incredibly valuable to the black children (and the black community) in Mississippi who would otherwise not receive the same form of education. Staughton Lynd, a former Chairman of the History Department at Spelman College, directed the Freedom School project in Mississippi.14 This came about after John O’Neal, a SNCC Mississippi organizer called Lynd and asked him to coordinate the Schools.15 Lynd said himself that he was unsure why he was chosen; but, as a famous peace activist and professor, Lynd was well known and respected.16 Accepting the role, he sought to incorporate a curriculum that would boost the children’s confidence, increase voter literacy, and offer political organizational and academic skills. Lynd knew that in order to “create a truly representative political party”,17 the black population needed to develop self-confidence and the necessary skills to positively influence their community. Most of the Black population in Mississippi was disempowered because of the acute racism and stamp of inferiority that was placed upon them by whites. Segregation was rampant, but protests, sit-ins, marches, and boycotts were not as prevalent in Mississippi as they were in other 13 The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1971.
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